Not With a Whimper, but a Bang

So last weekend we, like everyone else in the Northeast, were laid low by the freak October snowstorm that ate the last of the gardening season.  No gentle fading into late fall this year.  No, Mother Nature brought the season to an abrupt and violent conclusion.  Smothered it in fact, in a thick blanket of heavy cement-like snow, weighing down the still-leafy trees until their trunks snapped, reverberating like shotgun blasts throughout the afternoon. 

The storm rolled in earlier than expected and stayed longer and behaved much worse than our usual meteorological visitors. Even our earliest snowstorms in the past have had the good manners to wait til the leaves fall from the trees, but not this time. And our poor Kousa dogwoods paid the price.  

Here's the dogwood I see from our kitchen window.  It's about noon last Saturday, October 29th.  The storm has just started arrived.  If you enlarge this photo, you can see how heavily the snow is falling.  At this point, the Kousa and it's neighboring rhododendron and hydrangea are still proudly upright.

Noon -- the storm starts to get serious

By about 1:30 PM, there are a couple of inches on the ground -- still not too much -- but it's clear that this snow is sticking like velcro.  Very. Heavy. Velcro.  The Kousa is already bowed, as are it's friends.

1:30 -- this is not going to be pretty

It's at this point that we feel compelled to venture out to shake some snow off the branches before they give way entirely.  But it takes only 10-15 minutes before we're totally spooked by the sounds of cracking tree branches and the unmistakable slow motion crashes of enormous trees keeling over so we retreat through the garage into our mudroom to shed our way-too-soon winter garb and head upstairs.  We pause on the landing to look out at the driveway and hear an awfully close gunshot and the swish, crash bang of a huge falling limb which makes us both duck reflexively even though we're inside.  We look out at the place on the driveway where we usually park the cars we'd moved just two hours earlier and see this:

 ... which used to be attached to this:

... which is a good 60 feet up in the air.  Which means that a) had we come in 5 minutes later, we would have been flattened, and b) it was a really, really good idea to move the cars!  We also were extremely lucky because the limbs missed both the generator and the propane tank that powers it, straddling both without doing any damage.  As if to punctuate our good fortune, it was right about then that the power went out.  For 5 days.  But the generator worked, and we were able to keep the house warm and flush toilets, so we were in relatively good shape.  As I write this, there are areas in my own and neighboring towns that still don't have power, so believe me, I'm not complaining.


Meanwhile, back on the other side of the house, the Kousa went completely prostrate.  Or perhaps, given what had just happened down below, maybe it was just ducking for cover.

Kousa flattened, along with its neighbors

By Sunday morning things had calmed down enough to take stock of the damage. It was impressive.  We'll start with a full foot (maybe a bit more) of soggy snow.  Too heavy to shovel; too wet to plow, so it's going to be with us for quite a while.  Behind what used to be our seating area, you can see a standard Rose of Sharon bent all the way to the ground, festooned with sticky flakes.

Poor Rose of Sharon in the background; it's supposed to stand straight up!

No hope for fall crops.  Somewhere under the blanket below is spinach, arugula, and lettuce.  Poor defenseless sprouts!

No arugula today!

Then there's the hydrangea -- the proud subject of a post just a week before, now also bowed down to the ground.

Snowbound Hydrangea

A week later I can report that, happily, the Hydrangea, Kousa, and Rose of Sharon have bounced back in testament to the resilience of growing plants.  Sadly though, we did lose a weeping cherry tree in the front yard, and plenty of big branches from those oaks that stand sentinel all around our hill.

Oak limbs down on the hill

Cleanup has taken quite some time -- and an awful lot of chainsawing.  That's Mr. Mulch's job.  It's my job to stack the wood, and we both haul away branches and leaves.  Lots and lots of branches and leaves.  It's a real mess.  After three full days of sawing and stacking, here's what used to be the half an oak tree that shaded our driveway until it decided to become one with it...

A full cord of wood

There is a positive side to all of this:  at least we won't need any firewood for about five years!